Treat Alzheimer’s Disease with Music Therapy
Alzheimer’s Disease is the sixth leading cause of death1, and 5.8 million Americans 65 and older live with it. With Alzheimer’s disease, you experience progressive memory loss, cognitive decline, and a lack of awareness of where you are. Your neurons die with damage to the brain tissue, and it’s expected to progressively worsen with time2.
Alzheimer’s has stages, and one of the earlier stages is mild cognitive impairment, which is when you meet the criteria for dementia and you’re not cognitively active for your age3. Music therapy for mild cognitive impairment not only helped cognitive performance4,5 better than placebo did, but it was the best treatment out of nine other treatments, even exercise, acupuncture, and pharmacological therapies4.
With music therapy for mild cognitive impairment, you experience active music making, which is physically engaging in the music and can include improvising, singing, playing instruments, and moving while listening, and you’ll still show cognitive improvements if you do 30 min or 2 hours or even once a week up to five times a week5. More importantly, where no adverse effects have been reported for music therapy, other treatments like acupuncture and pharmacological therapies have reported adverse effects4.
Moving up the stages to dementia, music therapy can help reduce your apathy6 agitation7, and even anxiety and depression7,8. It is likely you’ll have improvements in memory and cognition, but it’s difficult to know if those improvements were to the reduction in anxiety7. Nevertheless, singing is effective for you if you have dementia, and your music therapist should encourage your professional caregivers to sing sensitively to you during caregiving activities9.
If you have Alzheimer’s Disease, exercise and acupuncture can also be effective, but there was a lack of evidence for music therapy. However, the available evidence for music therapy treating Alzheimer’s did suggest improvements in cognitive function and mental well-being10.
Music alone can help improve your memory deficits11, and the creative arts therapies (which includes music therapy) can help with your emotional challenges, but it may not necessarily help with your cognitive decline12. A better approach might be combining physical activity with music interventions. This combination can improve your cognitive function and well-being13 and even just help you participate more in physical activities14,15.
Even if all you have is mild to moderate dementia, combing a music intervention with physical activity could help you reduce anxiety, restlessness, irritability, and aggression. The increased physical exercise can also help you increase your strength14,16, reduce your risk of falling, and improve your quality of life17. Combining Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation with physical activity also helped improve the ability to move when in sync with the music16. You can also do therapeutic instrumental music performance, and musical neglect training to patients’ movement18,19, and you can combine these music interventions with balance activities, stretching, moving, and strengthening exercises, and breathing exercise13, as well as singing and playing instruments with a fast tempo and strong downbeat14,17,20. Other interventions include working on the upper and lower extremities while clapping to music21, but you could always just walk to music.
Physical activity set to music can also mean dancing, and dance/movement therapy (another type of the creative arts therapies) has shown clinical improvement in people with Alzheimer’s Disease22,23 and mild cognitive impairment24,25,26. In fact, one systematic review found that dance/movement therapy substantially improved global cognitive function, memory, and executive function on people with mild cognitive impairment. Neurologically, dance/movement therapy can help older people improve neuronal connectivity and neuroplasticity27. For patients with mild cognitive impairment specifically, volumes in the hippocampus (area associated with memory) increased and cortical thickening in occipital regions (area associated with sight) was observed in after receiving six months of dance intervention28.
If you have mild cognitive impairment and do dance/movement therapy, it’s strongly suggested you do it for at least three months, because the longer you do it, the better you benefit, and you can see benefits in your global cognitive functioning26. On smaller time frames, 12 weeks of dance/movement therapy can help with your mild cognitive impairment by improving episodic memory27. But if you have Alzheimer’s Disease and do dance/movement therapy you can improve or slow the worsening of your quality of life22,23 and could potentially influence your motor symptoms, cognitive deficits, and mood22.
Overall, when it comes to music therapy and dance/movement therapy, it’s very clear that people with Alzheimer’s Disease can and do benefit. Even so, a bit of caution should be applied: you should not simply put on the radio and walk away. Ambient music might reduce agitation temporarily, but it won’t have any long-term benefits29 but a qualified professional can help you keep your mental and physical health for as long as possible.
1. Xu 2020 Mortality in the United States www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm
2. Alzheimer’s Association 2020 2020 Alzheimer’s disease facts and figures. https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/alz.12068
3. Brendan & Kelley 2015 Treatment of mild cognitive impairment www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26208489/
4. Lai 2020 The Comparative Efficacy of Multiple Interventions for Mild Cognitive Impairment in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Bayesian Network Meta-Analysis www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7289916/
5. Dorris 2021 Effects of music participation for mild cognitive impairment and dementia: A systematic review and meta-analysis www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34008208/
6. Goris 2016 Quantitative systematic review of the effects of non‐pharmacological interventions on reducing apathy in persons with dementia www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27221007/
7. Hanser 2021 The effectiveness of music-based interventions for dementia: An umbrella review www.mmd.iammonline.com/index.php/musmed/article/view/823
8. Kishita 2020 Nonpharmacological interventions to improve depression, anxiety, and quality of life (QoL) in people with dementia: An overview of systematic reviews. www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31203712/
9. Chatterton 2010 The singer or the singing: Who sings individually to persons with dementia and what are the effects? www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21131670/
10. Wang 2020 Overview of Meta-Analyses of Five Non-pharmacological Interventions for Alzheimer’s Disease https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7723835/
11. Moreira 2018 Can musical intervention improve memory in Alzheimer’s patients? Evidence from a systematic review www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6022981/
12. Cowl & Gaugler 2014 Efficacy of creative arts therapy in treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia: A systematic literature review www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK293432/
13. Li 2022 Exploration of combined physical activity and music for patients with Alzheimer’s disease: A systematic review www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9425638/
14. Johnson 2012 The Use of Music to Improve Exercise Participation in People with Dementia: A Pilot Study www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/02703181.2012.680008
15. Mathews 2001 Keeping the beat: Use of rhythmic music during exercise activities for the elderly with dementia www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11765863/
16. Minino 2021 The effects of different frequencies of rhythmic acoustic stimulation on gait stability in healthy elderly individuals: A pilot study www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98953-2
17. Langhammer 2019 Music Therapy and Physical Activity to Ease Anxiety, Restlessness, Irritability, and Aggression in Individuals with Dementia with Signs of Frontotemporal Lobe Degeneration www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30753735/
18. Wittwer 2019 Home-Based Gait Training Using Rhythmic Auditory Cues in Alzheimer’s Disease: Feasibility and Outcomes www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32083083/
19. Braun Janzen 2021 Rhythm and Music-Based Interventions in Motor Rehabilitation: Current Evidence and Future Perspectives https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35111007/
20. Chen & Pei 2018 Musical dual-task training in patients with mild-to-moderate dementia: A randomized controlled trial www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29881275/
21. Satoh 2017 Physical Exercise with Music Maintains Activities of Daily Living in Patients with Dementia: Mihama-Kiho Project Part 21 www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28222531/
22. Mabire 2019 Dance interventions for people with dementia: systematic review and practice recommendations www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30296957/
23. Ruiz-Muelle & López-Rodríguez 2019 Dance for people with Alzheimer’s disease: a systematic review www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31345149/
24. Liu 2021 Effects of dance interventions on cognition, psycho-behavioral symptoms, motor functions, and quality of life in older adult patients with mild cognitive impairment: a meta-analysis and systematic review www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34616285/
25. Wang 2021 Effectiveness of dance-based interventions on depression for persons with mci and dementia: a systematic review and meta-analysis www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35069306/
26. Wu 2021 The effect of dance interventions on cognition, neuroplasticity, physical function, depression, and quality of life for older adults with mild cognitive impairment: a systematic review and meta-analysis www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34298320/
27. Zhu 2022 Effect of 3-month aerobic dance on hippocampal volume and cognition in elderly people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment: a randomized controlled trial www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35360212/
28. Rektorova 2020 Brain structure changes in nondemented seniors after 6-month dance-exercise intervention www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31613387/
29. Padilla 2011 Effectiveness of Environment-Based Interventions for People with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22026319/
